Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Neil's Harbour, Cape Breton Island

Yesterday morning, we left Bay St. Lawrence and had breakfast at Cabot Landing day use park. After that, we headed just past the village of Neil's Harbour to hike the Coastal Trail.

Again, we've profiled our hike of the Coastal Trail in a separate post. You can view it here. But we do have a couple more photos to show you...

A large moose footprint, but we didn't see any moose. In fact, we haven't seen any moose this whole trip!

We saw a snake though! He was just a little guy, maybe a foot long or so.

Kevin on the Coastal Trail

Stopped for a break

We did the Coastal Trail at 11.3 kms (7.0 miles) and the Jigging Cove Brook Trail at 2.8 kms (1.7 miles) for a total hike of 14.1 kms (8.7 miles). It took us 4 hours, and we had left Whiskey behind to guard Sherman. These hikes are both in the National Park so they count towards our 75 km (46.5 mile) hiking goal. We are now more than half way at 46.2 kms (28.6 miles)!

Our feet were pretty tired after that, and we were looking forward to going to the Chowder House for a bowl of seafood chowder in Neil's Harbour. We had overnighted there when we were here 3 years ago and hoped to do the same thing again, but when we arrived they weren't yet open for the season! Still, their empty parking lot overlooking the ocean beside the lighthouse was going to be okay for the night, and it was. This morning, there are several cars parked here with people working inside, so they must be opening soon.

All of you readers suffering from the heat down south only need to know that the grass is not always greener on the other side...we would love to have some heat! High temperatures all this week are forecast to be around 12C (54F), with not much sun. We will make do, but it sure would be nice to experience some shorts and t-shirt weather!

Sherman, boondocking in the parking lot beside the lighthouse and the Chowder House restaurant in Neil's Harbour. (GPS 46.80696 -60.31848)

10 comments:

I just checked the weather here in Nelson, B.c. ..it's 9 and raining...more of the same for the long term forecast!...We have yet to get any hot weather and we are tired of rain. Sure, it's green....but a little parched earth would look good right now. O Canada...you sucked in hockey last night and your weather across the country sucks too!

We have had a couple of nice days of temps in the 80's and an occasional shower, not like last week being in the oven.Maybe it will brighten up your way this week after traveling across the Eastern USA.Be safe out there. Sam & Donna...

It seems it is a summer of extremes in weather here North America. I am always excited to log on to your blog. I've read about Nov Scotia but have yet to visit that area and every day I read your blog I see why it needs to be on our list of places to visit!

I'm ashamed to admit how nice it is here in Vienna. Any time we've gone back to N.S. it was always warm, yet cooler and dryer than Ontario. It would be a nice comfortable 25 (mid seventies) and our relatives would be complaining of the heat! Meanwhile the heat index in Ontario would be closer to 40! (over 100) Best not to make fun of the locals though. Especially when they're related.Hope it warms up for you...but not to Ontario temps!

We are so interested to see all your travels. You make everything look like an adventure. Canada is quite the amazing place. Now, if we could only see a bit of sun. Even here on the West Coast, there hasn't been much. Still we are polishing up our VW Westfalia "Euri" and getting ready to head south 2nd week of January. We can hardly wait. :-)

This place looks lovely. What a beautiful picture at the top of the blog.I would love to send you about 20 degrees of our 100-102 degrees here in Texas. I have no idea how we always do this a-- backwards. We are headed to Ohio but not until the end of July. One day we will be were we should be during each season.Enjoy your journey.

Okay, this is a long story... you better make yourself comfortable! Some of our long time readers might remember that I (Kevin) need to ge...

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